NASCAR officials believe that the new system will force crew chiefs to make more decisions and take more chances.

Steve Letarte, crew chief for Dale Earnhardt Jr., isn’t so sure.

“I know it’s hard to believe but we already take pretty calculated risks to try to win every week,” Letarte said two days before the official announcement of the Chase format. “There’s a difference between taking a risk and throwing up a Hail Mary, and I don’t think anyone on pit road throws up Hail Marys.

“The key is that everyone wants to get off to a good start and everybody wants to win races but I don’t know if you can take more chances to win. If there’s any sliver of hope for a strategy to work, there’s a lot of guys on it. I don’t know how you can change that. There’s going to be 15 guys on that strategy with you. The odd strategy now is the conservative one.”

Teams likely won’t take chances early in the Chase, when the field gets cut to 12 and then eight drivers in the first two elimination rounds. It probably will be better to be conservative than to try for a win that would automatically qualify a driver for the next round. The reason? The possible repercussions of a bad finish would force a driver to take more risks for a win.

“Looking at this format they’re laying out, consistency through the chase will be a very important thing because you have to position yourself among the top cars,” Roush Fenway Racing competition director Robbie Reiser said.

In addition to whether teams try to stretch it on fuel or take two tires instead of four, crew chiefs and competition directors likely will save tests for the races at the tracks that determine eliminations and the season finale at Homestead. Each organization gets four tests, and some crew chiefs wouldn’t rule out possibly using two of those at Homestead.

“We’ve already canceled a few of our early-season tests in anticipation of what is going to happen in the Chase,” Joe Gibbs Racing crew chief Darian Grubb said just prior to the announcement. “We don’t feel like we know enough right now to be able to go use up one of our four tests as an organization at Phoenix early in the season.

“But we also know how important it is to pick up a win early in the season because it puts you in a mode of where you can really learn and be aggressive the rest of the year in trying to figure things out.”

Crew chiefs might very well use tests at Kansas and Charlotte in hopes that they are in a good points position before the second-round elimination race at Talladega. The drivers who are in a good position to be in the top eight will probably feel less pressure at Talladega.

“Then you can go all-out and go for the win, you don’t need that car back, you aren’t going to race that (Talladega) car at Homestead,” Grubb said. “You’re going for a trophy at that point.”

Of course, it depends on the driver. Marcos Ambrose, one of the best Cup drivers on road courses, likely will test at Watkins Glen and then at one of the early Chase tracks.

“With Marcos, I probably have a clear-cut favorite at Watkins Glen,” Ambrose crew chief Drew Blickensderfer said. “I know he is the best doing it if we can give him the car. It makes it to where we can maybe focus on those events and then put the other efforts in the first few Chase races.

“You don’t want to count your chickens before they hatch, but you can put your efforts in a way so you can make a lot more noise.”